lode

the shelf's iron farm with nothing alive in it. swamp mud grows bog iron on a clock, and one nodule in four is verdigris; stone beside lava crusts with brimstone; warm seabeds grow pearls in oyster beds. every bed is rakeable or pickable by the works, so a rake line sweeping a bank onto a belt that climbs to a furnace bank is the whole farm, and it scales by adding rows to the same shaft. a bank is found in a swamp, or built there from mud, and the biome and the water are the only fence.

and every so often the ground turns up a find: a clod it kept. through the kettle it renders to the country's minerals, no hand anywhere. opened by hand it rolls the country's hoard instead: a bog keeps votive things, old iron and gold, a sword, boots, a saddle, a stoppered flask, rarely an enchanted book, very rarely a trident; a bed keeps the sea's, shells and rarely a heart of the sea; a crust keeps the fire's. the good roll is rare because the machine road is always there. the hand road is a small ceremony with a real chance in it, and it cannot be automated, which is the point.